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the hot and dusty plain The plain, God knew, had dwellers enough

She was a thing of wild and sylvan grace, and there was fulfilliven as a child About her

was a pathos, too,--the pathos of the flower taken fro in earth which nourished it not Haward, looking at her,

watching the sensitive,in the dark eyes, beneath the

felicity of the present, a hint and prophecy of woe, felt for her a pity

so real and great that for the moment his heart ached as for soirl, poor and helpless, born of poor

and helpless parents dead long ago There was in her veins no gentle

blood; she had none of the world's goods; her goas torn, her feet went

bare She had youth, but not its heritage of gladness: beauty, but none to

see it; a nature that reached toward light and height, and for its home

the house which he had lately left He was a ood and evil; by instinct preferring the

forree of the latter

which a lax and gay world held to be not incompatible with a convention

soentleman" Now, beneath the beech-tree

in the forest which touched upon one side the glebe, upon the other his

own lands, he chose at this ti he said, that in word and in deed he would prove himself her

friend